Cleveland Museum of Natural History launches a $125 million campaign to pay for a radical transformation

Lucy, Steggie, Balto and other beloved exhibits at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History are about to get a much nicer home.

The museum plans to transform itself during the next decade with a $125 million expansion and renovation. Collections and research areas will be housed in crystalline new wings designed to embrace Wade Oval in University Circle and to break down barriers between science and the public.

Were going to create something exciting, something thats going to have a great impact on the region and something that will be a new model for what natural history museums can be, said Evalyn Gates, the respected particle physicist who became the museums director in 2010.

The museum, which plans to announce its capital campaign formally Wednesday, doesnt have a precise timetable for the expansion and renovation, but will break ground once it has raised 70 percent of the cost.

Gates and other leaders at the institution say theyre confident they can raise money quickly from corporations, foundations and individual donors eager to promote education in science and technology as a way to boost Clevelands economy.

They also believe they can tap a deep reservoir of positive sentiment about the museum among many Clevelanders who had their first taste of science as children during family visits or school trips.

Theres a buzz in the community about the museum and about Evalyn, said Peter Anagnostos, the museums chief development officer. We have to take advantage of that.

A. Chace Anderson, president of the museums board of trustees, said that with a $130 million endowment and a record of 35 years of balanced budgets, the museum is in a solid financial position. The museum also owns 5,000 acres of nature preserves in 40 properties across northern Ohio.

In 2008, the museum was poised to go ahead with an earlier expansion plan but held off when the recession hit.

Gates re-evaluated the initial project when she arrived from her previous job as assistant director of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago. She decided that a bolder makeover than the one originally envisioned was needed. And she said she believes the museum needs to come forward now.

The project makes the natural history museum the latest cultural institution in Cleveland to seek a major reinvestment in recent years.

The Cleveland Orchestra is in the midst of boosting its $130 million endowment to $300 million, and the Cleveland Museum of Art is within $90 million of raising $350 million to pay for an eight-year expansion and renovation scheduled for completion late next year.

These institutions anchor the city in a way that helps us build the future, Gates said.

Incorporated in 1920, the museum occupied two buildings on Euclid Avenue before moving to University Circle in the 1950s, where it gradually built a dowdy melange of bunker-like brick buildings on the west side of Wade Oval.

The accumulated expansions created a footprint of 226,000 square feet. Once inside the museums gloomy lobby, visitors can walk left to special exhibits and an auditorium or turn right to enter permanent exhibits. Straight ahead lies the open-air Smith Courtyard, which features landscapes and plantings that represent Ohio ecosystems.

Permanent displays have long included reconstructed dinosaur skeletons; Lucy, a 3.2 million-year-old human ancestor; and Balto, the preserved remains of the famous husky that helped haul diphtheria serum to Nome, Alaska.

One goal of the new project is to give the museum a fresh image that makes the major exhibits including dinosaur skeletons visible from surrounding streets.

Gates also wants the public to see into labs where the museums working scientists perform research in paleontology, botany and other fields. Transparency expressed through lots of glass will be a major theme.

I think were creating an architectural gem, Anderson said. This is a radical change in terms of mission, in terms of appeal to the public.

The new plan calls for demolishing the Kirtland Hall of Prehistoric Life and the Sears Hall of Human Ecology, which total 100,000 square feet.

Construction of the new wings one of which will wrap around the museums shiny new copper-skinned planetarium will be followed by the relocation of exhibits and the demolition of the older structures. That entire process should take about 30 months.

The museum will then build a new, glass-enclosed museum lobby and a 300-space parking garage on the west side of the museums property, overlooking Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.

A glassy, new lobby would be the centerpiece of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History's expansion.
Fentress Architects

Visitors will be able to walk from the garage to the new main lobby by traversing a glassy overhead walkway positioned in the treetops of the Smith Courtyard and the Perkins Wildlife Center, which will be made contiguous. Today, those outdoor areas are separated by the exhibit halls.

When finished, the expanded and renovated museum complex will be 300,000 square feet, about a third bigger than it is today. The expansion will incorporate environmentally sensitive features such as green roofs, solar-power arrays and systems to recycle water.

The strategy of demolishing older additions not considered worthy of preservation echoes the expansion of the Cleveland Museum of Art, which demolished additions built in 1958 and 1983 before adding two new wings on the east and west sides of its campus.

But unlike the art museum, which closed entirely for nearly all of 2006, the natural history museum vows to remain open throughout construction to serve regular audiences, including school groups.

Denver architect Curt Fentress, who devised the earlier expansion plans for the museum in 2008, is also designing the new project.

Anderson will co-chair the $125 million capital campaign with James Hambrick, chairman, president and CEO of The Lubrizol Corp.

The museum has also named three honorary chairs for the campaign, all of whom have said that early experiences at the institution shaped their careers: Scott R. Inkley of Chagrin Falls, a former CEO of University Hospitals; Bobbie Brown of Chardon, president of the Louise H. and David S. Ingalls Foundation; and Harvey Webster of Kirtland, who heads the Wildlife Resources Division at the museum.

The museum launched its campaign quietly two months ago and has raised money, Anderson said, but is not yet ready to announce gifts.